National Nurses United

With multiple threats of attacks on health workers, efforts to privatize public health services, austerity budget cuts (especially in healthcare), widening inequality, and the effects of the climate crisis including escalating epidemics, nurses around the globe are stepping up coordinated efforts to fight back. In a meeting in Las Vegas Sept. 26, top leaders of Global Nurses United, which includes 20 nurse and health worker unions from the Americas, Asia, Africa, Australia, and Europe, further cemented their alliance through soli- darity efforts on domestic health care battles and international work on harmful trade deals, the climate crisis, and confronting the Ebola outbreak. Formed in June 2013, GNU continues to grow, adding at the Las Vegas meeting new nurse union members from Greece, Kenya, Paraguay, Taiwan, Uruguay, and the Dominican Republic, and adopting a founding constitution. The GNU now has 20 affiliates from 18 countries. "We know there's an agenda that the healthcare corporations have, that Wall Street has, that the financial sector has, to take as much profit from public services as possible and to have that wealth transferred to themselves," said RoseAnn DeMoro, executive director of National Nurses United, the U.S. "found- ing mother" of GNU, as she put it in a new video on GNU. "That's an internation- al agenda and we have to have an international organization to offset that." In Las Vegas, GNU leaders described the scope of what they confront at home in challenges that are key GNU priorities, from the campaigns for safer patient care, especially with mandatory nurse-to-patient ratios, to challeng- ing austerity, privatization, and the effects of the climate crisis and corpora- tization. Julio Cesar García Cruceta, general secretary of the Sindicato Nacional de Trabajadores de Enfermeria of the Dominican Republic, reported how nurses and health workers have challenged the government of the Dominican Republic to act on issues "affecting safe care for the Dominican society." Judith Kjeda, assistant general secretary of the New South Wales Nurses and Midwives' Association, described rollbacks in hospital staffing from the new conservative government in Australia and how nurses across the country are holding actions to push for safer staffing, including nurse to patient ratios. From South Korea, Ji-Hyun Yoo, president of the Korean Health and Medical Workers Union, outlined the way nurses are promoting a Korean law for nursing ratios and opposing the current president's plan to privatize the health system. Roberto Bomba, treasurer of the Fédération Interprofessionnelle de la santé du Québec, talked about the fight for RN ratios in Quebec, Canada, and cited what RNs in Quebec have learned from the experiences of Califor- nia RNs who won the first ratio law in the United States. Maria Concepcion Chavez, president of Asociación Paraguaya de Enfer- mería, told about serious staffing shortages in new health facilities across Paraguay that have resulted in widespread work load problems for nurses that put patients at risk. Juan Andres Mastandrea Caballero, general secretary of Sindicato Unico de Enfermeria del Uruguay, reported on the spreading use of technology being used to replace nursing staff in Uruguay. Guatemala has among the most severe conditions for health workers. Luis Lara Ballina, general secretary of Sindicato Nacional de los Trabajadores de Salud de Guatemala, reported wide- spread shortages of provisions for vaccinations, medications, surgical materials, while health workers go unpaid. Nurses and health workers have responded with multiple mobilizations, he noted, and been met with rightwing threats. In support of the Guatemalan struggle, GNU delegates adopted a statement of solidarity voicing concern for the deteriorating conditions of health workers as well as a growing food shortage and high level of mal nutrition in the country. "For each 10 children," the statement noted, "eight suffer chronic malnutrition which affects their brain development, learning capacity and physical development." The statement also called on the Guatemalan president, Congress, and other leaders to support a Robin Hood Tax on financial speculation that would "provide economic resources to support the strengthening of com- munity health clinics" as well as "strengthening Guatemala's public health system." Similar Robin Hood Taxes are being pushed and adopted in other countries, and the growing global campaign for them is a GNU priority. GNU delegates also embraced the growing global movement to confront the climate crisis. In a presentation to the union leaders, Sean Sweeney, co- director of the Cornell Global Labor Institute, noted "the climate crisis is a health crisis." Health effects include the direct consequences of extreme weather events like storms, wildfires, and droughts, to what he called "secondary effects," including skin cancers, dengue fever, malaria, higher asthma rates, and diarrhea and malnutrition which lead to stunted growth among children. One way in which nurses have responded is to form the Registered Nurse Response Network, a group that usually sends RN volunteers to disas- ter zones. The current project for RNRN is collecting assistance for the rapid- ly spreading Ebola outbreak in West Africa, which also has a climate connection, principally through deforestation and drought. RNRN has received a donation of 1,000 Hazmat suits from a U.S. manufactur- er, that will be heading to West Africa, and is also requesting donations for more protective suits for nurses and other health workers who have been infected and died in what the World Health Organization calls "unprecedented" numbers. At the GNU meeting, the Canadian Federation of Nurses Unions announced a donation of $33,000 for RNRN's effort, and other delegates pledged to support the campaign as well, including a response for financial assistance from the Liberian health workers union. GNU leaders then adopted recommendations on how to escalate the voice of GNU and nurses in the international climate fight, as well as adopting reso- lutions on the threat to workers' rights posed by pending global trade pacts, including the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement, and a letter to the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights on the ongoing Detroit water crisis. Next, GNU members will hold actions in Brisbane, Australia in November in concert with an upcoming meeting of G20 national leaders, and actions next May in conjunction with international nurses' week. —Charles Idelson GLOBAL NURSES STEP UP CAMPAIGNS ON HEALTHCARE, CLIMATE FIGHT

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